Saturday, 6 April 2019

I realised then what I had to do. I began to
slink away from the crowd, but someone noticed me and shouted. I must have
looked suspicious, or perhaps a chink of reflected light revealed my true form.
I turned and began to sprint back to the portal, my old bones aching with the
effort. Every now and then I’d cast a look behind and see the slavering jaws of
my pursuers. Halfway up, I felt the sharp claws of a feline digging into my
tail, but it failed to gain purchase, and I ran, spurred further on by this
encounter. I didn’t dare look behind me now as I pounded across the concrete
and through the pools of oily material, which splashed up my legs, my white fur
soon stained a muddy black. I knew I had to keep running, outpace the demons
behind me - it was Mimi’s only chance. With my heart pounding in my ribcage I
made it to the portal and crashed through, landing in the hub in a heap. Two of
the felines followed me and as I lay there, catching my breath, I wondered if
they were so fired up they would blatantly reach protocol. But Fred soon
squared up to them and they sank back to portal five, and vanished from sight.

‘Are you OK there?’ he asked, turning to me.
His hair was still on end, his lips quivering, revealing his incisors, one of
which was jagged and split.

‘Fred…,’ I began, trying to catch my breath.

‘That’s my name. So what’s the problem…’

‘Fred,’ I tried again. ‘Can you get a message
to The Architect?’

‘Certainly can,’ he replied, looking around for
something which might grease this transaction. Unfortunately the small bag I
had been carrying had fallen off somewhere in the fracas.

‘You’ll be rewarded. I assure you.’

He thought about this for a while. ‘Well, a cat
like you doesn’t usually break his promises. So what is it you needs me to tell
The Architect.’

‘Tell him. We need. To mobilise. Mobilise The
Caterati.’

***

My strength soon returned when I was propped up at the bar of The
Cricketers, The Architect shoving a half pint of caramelised milk my direction.
I stopped licking the grime off my feet and sniffed this concoction. Normally
I’d avoid this kind of strong stuff, but at the time I was shaken, my limbs aching.
I could still see the jaws of my pursuers, dripping with saliva, their blood
shot eyes crazed with hate. I took the drink in one quick gulp, licking the
drops from the glass; it tasted a lot better than my feet had.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked The Architect, who
simply nodded in response.

It looked like Ziggy was doing most of the
grunt work, organising the troops in some function room upstairs. You could
tell something was going on up there - the floorboards creaked under the weight
of the assembled Caterati, and there was the occasional thud as a cat landed
somewhere. I felt like I should be up there too, but The Architect had insisted
that I took no part in this now. He was content to sit by my side and watch
time go by - after all, watching time was what he did best.

I felt the paws of cats as they passed by, on
their way to the little wooden staircase which wound up to the first floor.
They were patting me with sympathy I suppose, or perhaps even solidarity. After
all, they were all arriving, at this place, on my behest. Although in any case,
the rabble that the cat Fungus had roused were a threat that needed to be
neutralised. Some of the Caterati I recognised, some I didn’t; there were even
a few famous names, which had been drawn to help by the call to mobilise. I was
struck by their cosmopolitan nature of the Caterati, as if I was seeing them
with new eyes - all breeds and sexes were represented, which made a stark
contrast to those in the denizens beyond Portal number 5.

‘Another one?’ asked The Architect.

‘No thanks. I’d better keep a clear head.’

My saturnine pal nodded at this and ordered
another for himself. When this was standing in front of him, he finally turned
to me. ‘Going to be a long night,’ he remarked, before taking a draft, his whiskers
turning white with the milky froth.

‘We need to get moving!’ I said, not for the
first time. I couldn’t bear to think what was happening to those caged cats,
Mimi amongst them.

The Architect nodded to the other side of the
bar, where Ziggy had appeared. He had a tea cup, its handle snapped off,
crudely tied to his head and he was brandishing a broken bottle in one paw.
‘We’re ready. You follow the main thrust of the attack. Let the younger folk
fight.’ We nodded at this, unwilling to argue.

As the Caterati marched out, I was struck by
how many had assembled in the room above. There were hundreds of cats filing
out of the door of the pub, many like Ziggy clutching crude weapons: another
broken bottle here, a rolling pin there. The fat Tabby barman called Pete,
after an old friend of his Human Slave, stood watching them go by. Every now
and then he’d remove something from their grasp, despite protestations that
they would be returned: a number of pewter tankards, horse brasses and drinking
horns were accumulating behind him. The Caterati were also sporting a motley
arrangement of armour: tea cups, saucers and mugs, all appropriated from The
Cricketer’s.After a while, Pete
eventually gave up the attempts to retrieve his property and resumed his usual
position behind the bar, hiding his face behind a pint of the special draft.

We followed the last of them out, as
instructed. At the portal hub, Fred was in good spirits, the increased traffic
presumably having filled his pockets with filthy lucre. One day I resolved to
find out what he spent it all on. As soon as we exited the Portal number 5, we
could hear the fighting. Some cats were darting back the way we had come,
scared witless by this mad throng of cats. Others had already been beaten up
and were sporting bleeding wounds, hissing at us as we passed.

As we entered the main space, where Fungus’
rally had been taking place, it was a blur of furry forms. I occasionally made
out a familiar cat - Gaiman’s was obvious by his long black cloak, and he
seemed to get everywhere. I spied Smith, still wearing his leather overalls;
battling alongside him were a few clockwork devices, which jerkily moved around
the battlespace. And above was Athena’s owl, which flew around in circles, with
a bucket, occasionally tipping black tar-like material over Fungus’ men,
although I couldn’t see Athena herself.

For a moment, I wondered if Fungus’ ad hoc
troops were getting the better of us. Some of the Caterati were fallen,
sporting large wounds. I bent and helped one where it looked like a large flap
of skin had been removed, ribs visible beneath. Eventually she got up, nodded
and headed straight back into the fracas.

I looked to The Architect, wondering if he
should stop time for a while. He saw me looking at him, and discerning what I
was thinking in his usual disconcerting manner, shook his head. I imagined how
it would go for him if it had to be stopped. How the innumerable threads of
time would have to somehow be woven together.

But then thankfully, the tide turned. More of Fungus’
lot began to leave, and soon they were outnumbered. I searched the crowd for
the cat boxes, but there were only a few remaining – a number had been opened
and the cats inside thrown to the mercy of the rally. Which of course had shown
no mercy at all. With desperate tears in my eyes, I looked around for my young
charge. Then there was a black blur in front of my eyes: it was Mimi, freed and
running towards me. In a friendly manner, she biffed me around the chops,
before knocking me over and jumping onto my back. I assumed she was grateful.
She soon quietened and sat down alongside, the three of us watching as the
Caterati pawhandled Fungus into one of the cat boxes and locked it.

‘What are they going to do with him?’ I asked
The Architect.

‘Sentencing,’ he replied. ‘Then I suspect we’ll
find somewhere to lock him up.’

‘There is such a place?’

‘Oh yes. Not somewhere you ever want to go,’ he
replied. Although his words, and his steely glance, were directed more at Mimi
than at me. She looked at the floor guiltily and didn’t meet his glance.

‘Time I took you back home,’ I said. And before
we knew it, we were jumping up on the sofa and cuddling up to our Human Slaves.
Or at least Mimi was, as I affected my usual cool indifference.

***

There were celebrations in the Cricketers. And
funerals were held for the cats we lost. Although Mimi was instructed to remain
in the house, her misadventures grounding her. Our old portal was also fixed by
The Architect, and Mimi was prevented from roaming the innumerable paths of the
cats until she was a bit older. However, she was finding plenty to be
interested in locally. As for Fungus, he still remains in limbo, awaiting
sentencing.

It turned out that this event caused ripples of
discontent throughout our parallel universe. Fungus’ rally hadn’t been the only
one, and by disrupting it, we exposed this group for what it was. When a seed
of fear and anger is sown, it can spread, blown by whatever metaphysical wind
exists in our worlds. Or perhaps, if you like, a fungus can spread by
dissemination of its spores. And pockets of this were popping up all over. We
could only hope that the Caterati would smother this intolerance and hate with
something of their compassion, intelligence and more encompassing world view. Would
that be enough? What would happen next is anyone’s guess.